Honey Bee Anatomy, Identification of Sub-species

These are macro-photographs of the anatomy of a honey bee. I dissected the honey bee and preserved 5 of the body parts, which are essential to the tests I run in the lab. I am trying to identify honey bee colonies to the sub-specie level (race). More specifically, I'm trying to see whether the bees are of European or African descent. I perform morphometric analysis, where I read the body parts like a map, by taking measurements, such as the width, length and the angles where the veins intersect.

To create the photographs and auto-montage program was used. Multiple images were taken at varying depths of field, then stitched together to get highest clarity.

Forewing of Honeybee, wing venation patterns

Hind Wing of Honey Bee

Hamuli (hooks) on Hindwing of Honey Bee

The hamuli are hooks that hold the forewing and hindwing together like velcro.

Leg- Femur & Tibia, Honey Bee

Leg- Basitarsus of Honey Bee

The Basitartus is located on the hind leg. When honey bees are out foraging for pollen, they use their legs to collect and store the pollen. The pollen is collected on the scopa or hairs of the basitarsus.

Sternite from Abdomen on Honey Bee, cleaned and stained

This is the 3rd visible sternite, taken from the honey bee abdomen, which is the lower portion of the bee's body. As honey bees produce wax, it is excreted onto these small plates on the sternite called wax mirrors.

Swarms and Swarming

Years ago, I developed a strange physiological sensation. I remember writing I felt a swarm of bees had settled inside the cavity of my chest.

Up until then, I rarely thought about bees. It was only as a child that I concerned myself with them. I used to have a reoccurring dream, where I was being chased by a swarm. No matter how fast I ran or where I hid, I could not separate myself from them.

My fascination with the hive emerged from this visceral sensation of the bees swarming deep within the hollow of my chest.

The vibrations of their wings propelled me forward into the investigation of the complex, social network within the hive, as well as humanity’s relationship with the the hive throughout history.

My role with the hive continues to transform. Since then, I have stepped off the page, away from the familiar...

Observation Station: Attempts at Navigation

A temporary, mobile exhibition & informative, relational art piece installed at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, (coincidently next to the Natural History Museum). This temporary station occupied two locations in the museum. Museum visitors could see actual observation bee hives on front lawn of museum, and also visit a Pollinator Reading Station in the museum’s Bishop Study Center.

Photographed by: James Nguyen

Installation view, Observation Station: attempts at navigation

Samuel P. Harn Museum (2010)

Detail of bees, Observation Station (2010)

Detail, boy watching bees, Observation Station (2010)

Installation view, Observation Station

Harn Museum, Gainesville, FL (2010)

Detail of bees, Observation Station

Installation view, Observation Station

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, 2010 (each sculpture: 56” x 48” x 14”)

The top frame displays shapes used in lab experiments to test honey bee pattern recognition. Certain shapes were used to help prevent bees from drifting between hives.

Observation Station, Detail of frames

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, (each sculpture: 56” x 48” x 14”), 2010

The hive has frames made of paper with laser-cut symbols. As light shines through the frames, this strange cartography becomes discernible through a semi-transparent layer of wax.

Since Colony Collapse Disorder mainly affects honey bees’ spatial memory and navigation abilities, the Observation Stations functioned as a control towers. The symbols and maps were strategically placed on the frames with the purpose of assisting the bees with navigating in and out of the hive and to deter drifting between hives.

Detail frame, Diagram of human and honey bee vision

One of the frames from a hive, made of paper with laser-cut symbols. This frame compares the vision of honey bees and humans.

Observation Station, Detail of frame, Waggle Dance Map

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, 2010

This frame contains a diagram of the honey bee waggle dance, a dance used to communicate to the other bees the location of a nectar source in relation to the sun.

Installation view, Observation Station & Video projections

Harn Museum (2010)

Installation view, Observation Station

Harn Museum (2010)

Installation view, Video projection

Harn Museum (2010)

One of the videos, In and Out of the Hive, which was projected onto the side of the museum, shows a continuous stream of traffic pouring from the narrow entrance of a hive. The projected image of the hive merges with the architecture of the museum. Its content acquires a metaphorical dimension: as bees go into the hive, so do people enter the museum. The metaphor invests the museum with the attributes of the hive.

Pollinator Reading Station, Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Reading Station, Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Pollinator Reading Station, detail installation

Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Installation detail, Pollinator Reading Station,

Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Pollinator Station, detail of Apitherapy Backpack

Pollinator Reading Station, detail of Apitherapy Backpack

The Architecture of the Hive

The hexagon in my work refers to the geometrical figure as an overall sign of perfect order and the most efficient building block for architecture and design.

Honeycomb Stack

Wood, acrylic, 36"x36"x10", 2012

Honey bees collect pollen, which varies in color depending on the floral source. The pollen is stored within the hexagonal prisms, along the fringes of the honeycomb.

When honey bees construct honeycomb, this is the shape that forms the base of the hexagonal cells.

Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", 2010

A collaboration with my own honey bees. The bees built honeycomb onto the telephone I placed inside the hive. Late in the summer, a part of the hive swarmed.

This piece Swarm Phone speaks metaphorically about the much needed communication between humans and bees. Placing the telephone handset inside the hive was not just an intrusion into the bees' world, but also an act of faith expressing the desire to find common terms of communication. The handset featured a contact microphone that relayed the sounds from inside the hive. The bees could not translate the meaning of the handset, and we could not translate what the bees were saying. When we listen to the bees, will we be able to understand what they are saying?

Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", 2012

With a choice between several objects to build upon, the bees preferred the shape of the phone.

Swarm Phone, detail

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass,

13.5"x 15"x 3.5" (2010- bees) 2012

Detail, Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass,

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", (2010- bees) 2012

The bees chose to design an entrance or passageway near the curvature of the phone's earpiece. The bees could then walk directly through the honeycomb to access both sides of the comb

A celebration of togetherness

My great-grandparents Charles and Beulah "Boo" Hendrix started one of the first telephone companies in Texas. The Brazoria Telephone Company was started in 1946 and is still in operation today. My great-grandmother's career in the telephone business began when she was only 17 yrs. old, working as a telephone operator. My great-grandfather worked in the industry for 61 yrs. until he died in 1981. I remember my great-grandmother crying in amazement, the first time she witnessed a live screen view of the person on the other end of the phone line.

Drawings on navigation & orientation

Drawing: Expected direction, misdirection

paper, wax, honeycomb panel, laser-cut drawing (2010)

This drawing is a diagram illustrating the variability in navigation among honey bees when leaving the hive to locate a floral source or a new hive site.

Detail, Drawing: Expected direction, misdirection

Mapping honey bee dance patterns

Laser-cut paper, wax, honeycomb panel

The drawing shows patterns of movement honey bees follow when communicating with other bees.

Miniature Maps created for bees, 2008

Maps created for honey bees, directing them back to their hives at the bee unit.

BeeScan, an Episode of Techno Time Travel

2009

Apitherapy: Prescriptions & Instructions

Apitherapy: Prescriptions & Instructions from the Hive (2009) were a set of prescriptions that I personally wrote. The prescriptions were stored in an Apitherapy Backpack, which was a wooden, mobile backpack carrying products from the hive, such as royal jelly, honey and pollen. The bottom drawer of the backpack resembled the interior of a beehive box. The prescriptions and instructions were filed into the miniature frames like in a filing cabinet.

Pollen collected by honeybees

My bees carrying pollen into hive, 2010

Wildflower Seed Packet

Packets of wildflower seeds were passed out to the public, encouraging them to plant their own wildflower gardens to provide forage for bees.

Prescription: How to insert a package of honey bees into a new hive

Prescription: How to insert a package of bees into new hive continued

Prescription: How to avoid being stung by a bee (2009)

Prescription: Bee Pollen (2009)

Prescription: Honey for treating anxiety (2009)

Prescription: Honey for treating constipation (2009)

Prescription: Honey for losing weight (2009)

Prescription: Treating a wound with honey, while in wilderness

Prescription: Plant Beet Seeds (2009)

Prescription: Plant okra seeds (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

While wondering the countryside on a trip to Granada, Spain, I came across an apiary with rows of abandoned, stacked hives. This was the first time I photographed beehives and I was left wondering what happened to the bees.

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Honey

Honey photographed through the microscope.

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey

Microscopic images (2011)

Interview with a Bee

Colony Collapse Disorder is predicated on the inability of bees to remember how to return to the hive. If we were able to talk to bees about their problem, how would we go about communicating with them? In a humorous approach, this video stages an interview with a bee.

The video Interview with a Bee is a collage of black and white macro-images of honey bees cut out into bee puppets. I interview the bee with a microphone while wearing a beekeeper’s veil. Phone operators plug the lines into the honeycomb as if it were a switchboard, while other bees pick up the signals from a pirate radio station from within the hive. Although this video discloses the absurdity of attempting to communicate with bees on this level, it also points to the limitations of our sensory apparatus at the task. Even if we cannot fully understand the language of bees, we need to expand our outreach into their world and learn how to better communicate with them for our mutual benefit.

The video was recorded through a miniature bee spy camera.

Interview with a Bee, video clip

Interview with a Bee, video still (2009)

Still from video, Interview with a Bee (2009)

Interview with a Bee, video still (2009)

A Closer Look

Queen Bee, macro-photography

(2014) Macro-photoraphy, used auto-montage system

Florida Museum of Arthropods, Gainesville, FL

Getting a good photograph of a queen bee was a unique challenge. I had to wash and blow dry her hair. The photograph was created using an auto-montage system, using several images stitched together for optimal clarity. The photograph was published in an educational honeybee book in France.

Honeybee wing venations and worker bee

(2013) macro-photoraphy

The photograph of the honeybee worker wing was taken while performing USDA-ID, an extensive morphometric analysis test used to determine the origin of a bee colony and to see whether the colony is of European decent or has become Africanized. The image of the worker honey bee was taken using the auto-montage system at the University.

Varroa destructor, mite

(2009) macro-photograhy- auto-montage system

University of Florida, Department of Entomology

This is an image of the Varroa destructor, one of the greatest pests to the honey bee. The mite arrived in North America in 1987 from Asia.

Honeybee worker wing

(2014)

Projected image of worker honeybee wing from prepared microscope slide. I photographed this wing upon noticing an anomaly in the one of the vein intersections. This slide could not be used in the morphometric test I was running, since it was missing one of the vital 12 vein intersections.

Honeybee worker wing

(2014)

This wing also had an anomaly in one of the 12 vein intersections I use in the morphometric test USDA-ID.

Honeybee sternite

(2014)

Projected image from microscope slide I prepared for a USDA-ID test. I dissected the honeybee, removing the 3rd visible sternite from the abdomen where the wax is excreted. The sternite was then cleaned and stained and set into resin on the slide.

Beehive Backpack

A Meditation on the Migration of Honey Bees

Mixed media: reclaimed wood, cotton, wax (2009)

The Beehive Backpack is dedicated to Francois Huber (1750-1831), a Swiss naturalist and a blind beekeeper who greatly contributed to the advancements of modern beekeeping. The backpack design is based on Huber’s Leaf or Book Hive, which had partitions that opened like a book, allowing the honey bee colony to be fully observed and inspected without disturbing the bees.

The Beehive Backpack, created to be worn as an interactive art piece, speaks about migration, geography and community. Just as bees migrate for pollination, I traveled with the backpack and documented myself walking through various landscapes, some of those being, gardens in Florida, art fairs in New Orleans and a small coastal town in Mexico. Wearing the beehive on my back raised a lot of questions, which allowed me to explain to people the challenges bees are facing and simple actions people could take to improve the health of the bees. The locals also shared their own stories on bees and beekeeping.

The backpack was inspired upon learning of migratory beekeeping, where hives are rented out to farmers and transported to various locations to pollinate crops. American agriculture depends upon this type of migratory pollination. Ancient Egyptians also practiced migratory beekeeping by sending hives down the Nile on boats. North America has a history of migratory beekeeping where the bees were transported on barges, trains, horse-drawn carts and later on automobiles.

The migration of bees reminds me of my own experiences with traveling and being in constant motion. I find the satisfaction in the simplicity of carrying only the essentials on my back. I like the idea of being a part of a collective, of being connected through relationships to form a single unit that moves and works together. Perhaps this interest addresses a desire towards utopia and the struggle in the realization of our own limitations.

The hive presents the model of a society working in complete order and unity. Traveling to diverse locations in search for endangered hives while wearing the Beehive Backpack was an attempt to gain a deeper understanding into the complex world of bees and the relationship we have with the hive.

Beehive Backpack, a meditation on the migration of bees, Poster

Francois Huber's Leaf or Book Hive Design

Francois Huber (1750), a Swiss naturalist and a blind beekeeper, greatly contributed to the advancement of modern beekeeping. One such creation was his Leaf or Book Hive design. The hive, whose 12 partitions, opened like a book, allowed the honey bee colony to be fully observed and inspected.

Map with GPS coordinates, Places travelled wearing Beehive Backpack

This is a map showing GPS coordinates where I travelled by foot and by plane wearing the Beehive Backpack, while talking to people about bees.

Beehive Backpack, Community Gardens, Gainesville, FL

Communicating with the Hive

Installation View, Communicating with the Hive

The large, projected video shows a honey bee performing the waggle dance over the surface of the honeycomb. Several bees closely monitor the choreography of the dance. Bees use the symbolic dance language as one way to communicate the location of a food source in relation to the sun.

The video Inside the Hive is projected upon wooden beehive sculptures with tiny screen windows. In the tiny screens on the side of the hive, a separate video plays showing a performance where I am attempting to communicate with the honey bees through a choreographed dance.

Communicating with the Hive, Installation view

Installation- mixed media: video projection, wood, video monitors

Communicating with the Hive, video still

Still shot from video playing on a tiny screen on side of hive.

Here I am performing a choreographed dance in front of a hive in a field by the Dadant & Sons Bee Supply store in High Springs, FL. I am attempting to communicate with the bees through their symbolic dance language.

The performance was made into a video which I played back on a tiny screen inside the hive. In doing so, I transformed myself to the scale of a bee and the bees were enlarged to the size of humans.

Communicating with the Hive, installation view

Communicating with the Hive, video excerpt

Inside the Hive, video clip

Resilient Bee Community Garden

Resilient Bee Community Garden, Poster

Honey Bees and native bees are vital to our eco-system. They pollinate over 1/3 of the food we eat. Bee Populations are in crisis. We need to raise awareness. Let's create bee-friendly gardens within out communities to help save our bees.

Save Bees, detail poster

Photographed in the prairie near Micanopy, Fl, where a lot of bees forage on wild flowers year round.

Honeycomb Sculptures, local community garden (2014)

These stacks of honeycomb have interiors panels made out of the material some beekeepers use inside of the frames in a hive. The material is covered in beeswax and is called "plasticel".

Plant More Flowers!

Wildflower garden, planted in backyard

Native sweat bee, Halictus poeyi, 2013

Wild flowers planted in my own garden for the bees. This is a Halictus poeyi sweat bee gathering pollen from blanketflower Gaillardia pulchella.

Leaf cutter bee in my garden

Evidence of Leaf-cutter bees in my garden

Halictus poyei, native sweat bee

Native bees in my garden.

Native sweat bee, Agapostemon splendens, male

Male sweat bee photographed in my wildflower garden. The male bees race around the blossoms, tracking the elusive female bee as she visits the flowers.

Native long-horned bee, Melissodes, male

Long-horned male bees hanging out on narrow leaf sunflowers during the evening at Florida's Natural History Museum garden.

Exhibition postcard, "What's the Buzz?"

Exhibition postcard "What's the Buzz about?"

Leaf-cutter/ Megachilidae Bee Campaign

(2013) This small campaign is dedicated to the leaf-cutter bees living in the native pollinator nesting sites I created. This bee cuts circles into leaves from various plants in the yard. The bee uses the leaf circles to form a protective layer inside of a hollow stem, such as bamboo. This is where she lays her eggs, along with a small provision of pollen.

Native bee nesting site

Native bee nesting site

One of the native bee nesting sites I set up in my yard.

Leaves visited by leaf-cutter bees

Grape leaves visited by leaf-cutter bees in my back yard. Searching for these circular patterns while out on a walk is a lot of fun.

If I were a leaf-cutter bee...

Memphis Minnie models new Leaf-cutter bee design, April 2015

While walking, I am always looking for leaves visited by the leaf-cutter bees. This month in Florida (April) circular patterns are just starting appear in the tender, green leaves.

"Scruffie" Memphis Minnie models latest Leaf-cutter bee design

April 2015

ANTI-Leaf-Cutter Bee Leaf Patterns, 2015

While out walking, searching for leaves with circular patterns cut out of them, I came across evidence of a variety of insects (other than leaf-cutter bees). (April 2015)

ANTI-Leaf-Cutter Bee Leaf Patterns (2015)

These are leaf patterns created by other types of insects (April 2015).

ANTI-Leaf-Cutter Bee Leaf Patterns (2015)

A vast landscape of oil rigs montaged with leaves excavated by various insects.

Apis mellifera Walk

For my day job, I work in a lab as the Africanized honeybee lab technician, where I analyze honeybee samples sent in from Florida and other states and sometimes other countries. I perform morphometric analysis tests, where I read the body parts of a bee like a map to determine the genetic origin of the bees.

This past April, at the Vermont Studio Center, I continued to run morphometric analysis, only this time, I experimented with changing the scale of the bee wings. I enlarged the wings by laying them over the map of Johnson, Vermont. The 12 landmarks where the veins intersect were translated into GPS coordinates. This created a path, which I followed with two other artists, to navigate through the neighborhood in a performance called the Apis mellifera walk. We documented each of the 12 landmarks where the veins intersect on the honeybee wing.

Apis mellifera Walk, Vermont Studio Center

April 2014

Apis walk map

gps coordinates laid over wing

Honey bee wing merges with Florida map

This is another drawing I did using the honey bee wing. The 1st vein intersection starts in the center of Florida, where I live and work in the honey bee lab.

Apis Wing Merges with Human Body

Drawing 2014

Direction Finder for sound

Collage 2014

This is a collage of a man wearing a direction finder called a Topophone. The man is riding upon the Apis (honey bee) wings like a ship. The portable device, patented in 1880, was designed for use by ship captains to determine with precision the direction of a whistle in the thickest fog." The device augments the "powers of a listener's sound localization because it's two ear trumpets were spaced widely and collected more sound than human ears."

Smoke Signals, video still

Here is an early attempt at trying to communicate with the honey bees. In this video of a performance entitled Smoke Signals, I appropriate the use of smoke, which is the beekepers’ preferred method of calming the bees. I try to create signals to reach the bees.

Smoke Signals, video still (2008)

Here is an early attempt at trying to communicate with the honey bees. In this video of a performance entitled Smoke Signals, I appropriate the use of smoke, which is the beekepers’ preferred method of calming the bees. I try to create signals to reach the bees.

The Wolfgang Residency for Misplaced Drones

2009, color photograph

This photograph is dedicated to the artist Wolfgang Laib who gathers pollen out in the field and then uses it to create artwork.

Wolfgang Laib and the Bees

(2009) color inkjet print

I convinced Wolfgang Laib to set up an artist residency exclusively for drones, or male bees,so they could work as interns gathering pollen for Wolfgang's artworks. Drones within a honey bee colony do not forage for food or even feed themselves. In the winter time, the female worker bees kick most of the drones out of the hive in order to conserve resources for the rest of the colony. The Wolfgang Residency for Misplaced Drones offers male bees a chance to be successful contributors, if not within the hive, but alongside Wolfgang Laib in the creation of artworks.

Bee-crumbs

This video was created as a memento mori to the bees that died because they could not find their way back home. Bees' spatial memory and navigation abilities are affected by pesticides and other illnesses.

Entire honey bee colonies are becoming displaced, unable to make sense of their surroundings and unable to decipher where they belong. As exiles, the bees wander through nature and then vanish without a trace. The possibility of a world without honey bees and other pollinators is a harsh reality humans will have to face in the near future. The consequences for the life of plants (flora) in our immediate environment and for agriculture production could be devastating.

Walking around the yard with one eye shut, one eye opens to a kaleidoscopic vision of dead bees tumbling around a glass jar. Sunlight filters through the glass and flickers onto the bodies of the bees as they collapse and tumble over one another.

Bee-crumbs, video excerpt, 2008

Living with Bees

My beekeeping friend received a call from a homeowner in Gainesville, FL, who thought he had bees living in the exterior wall of his grandmother's house. Instead of killing the bees, he called a beekeeper to remove the colony. This was my first experience with bee removal. The process took over 10 hrs. We had to locate the nest, collect the queen, remove the honeycomb, fit the comb into frames, wait for the bees to follow the queen and finally relocate the hives.

Wall of Bees

Bee Call

After hearing bees in the wall, this guy decided to call a beekeeper for help. We were glad he wanted the bees to be relocated.

Searching for hive

We arrived on the scene and started searching for the location of the beehive. We could hear the hum of the bees behind an exterior wall of the house. A few bees were entering and exiting through a small hole in the wall. Translucent, cool puffs of smoke arose from the lit smoker and lingered around the sculptures in the small garden.

We set up a ladder with a hive box directly under the nest.

We cut into the wall and now I'm getting ready to lift the board covering the bees.

As we remove the exterior wall, the hive is completely visible.

Freshly built honeycomb and a lot of bees!

First piece of honeycomb removed from hive.

If you look on the upper left side of the honeycomb, you can see drone brood, which is where the male bee larvae are located.

With one part of the honeycomb removed, now we start removing the rest of the hive, while looking for the queen.

Look at the visual differences between the older honeycomb on the left and the fresh honeycomb on the right.

After removing the honeycomb from the nest, we then start fitting the comb into removable frames to be put into a hive body.

The bees had built honeycomb onto the exterior wall that we removed. If you look in the upper right corner, you can see more drone brood (male baby bees). Also, scan the honeycomb and look for larger cells, facing a different direction than the rest of the cells. In a hive, these cells would normally be vertical and open towards the bottom. These large cells, which resemble peanuts, are called queen cells.

The bees are gathering around a post. The queen is probably beneath the protective layer of the bees.

We continue to collect bees for hours, while transferring them into makeshift hives.

Since this was such a huge hive, we have to fit them into many boxes. Preparing to relocate the bees, I am taping up the full hives.

With whatever materials available, we prepare the beehive boxes for travel.

Observation Hive

Hive designed for observing honey bees. You just have to add the bees. This is a three framed hive.

Observation Hive Design

Three frame observation hive with clean, minimal design, 2015.

Detail, Observation Hive

Detail of base with bamboo inlay.

Detail, Observation Hive

Detail of translucent sliding tray to collect and remove debris from hive.